brainylady

Hallelujah, the Brainylady Canadian Summer Tour 2003: Knitting and Felting Extravaganza starts tomorrow! In fact, I leave in about twenty-four hours. I can't wait to get on the plane. My inflight project will be Paint Box sock #2.

Since I started knitting last fall, I've flown between Taiwan and Thailand, Taiwan and India, and Taiwan and Canada, and I've never encountered so much as a raised eyebrow at having bamboo and aluminum knitting needles in my carry-on. Well, not from airport security, anyway. I know you've all seen the raised eyebrows when you actually pull out the needles and yarn and start knitting. Some knitters may be sick of hearing that knitting is the new rock'n'roll, but it's not exactly common knowledge out there, is it? Actually, people seem mostly to be surprised when they see me knitting, and in a good way. One time in a coffee shop, an older woman told me (in Chinese) that my stitches were really even; I asked her if she knit, and she said no. Knitting in a different coffee shop, I noticed a woman had stopped outside to watch me through the window; I smiled and held up my knitting, and she beamed at me. On my flight to Delhi, I was sitting next to a British/Indian teenager; I was making a hat, and she was pretty interested (in a cool, offhand kind of way). Is there something kind of sick and twisted about looking forward to a ten-and-a-half-hour flight because it means uninterrupted knitting?

Anyway, I haven't even packed. I've written lists (so I'm 80% ready to go). I'm not going to take much knitting with me, since I plan to buy yarn, patterns, and so on while I'm there. I'm so excited to see some of the stuff that I keep reading about on blogs! Kureyon? Wool-ease? Vogue Knitting? Huh? The reason that the BCST2003:KFE includes Felting, by the way, is that I plan to felt a pair of Fuzzy Feet in my mom's washing machine. Truth be told, I plan to try it again. I visited my parents in March, and I took with me a pair of green ready-for-felting Fuzzy Feet. I put them through a hot wash. When the cycle finished, I had a really huge pair of socks. Washable wool. Duh. So I've knit another pair, and I'm going to try to felt them. If it doesn't work, I am going to assume that felting doesn't actually exist, and then I'm going to wonder why so many knitters are involved in a conspiracy against me.

I want you to be excited about my holiday, too! Remember the pictures of my neighbourhood here in Taipei? Have another look. OK, now have a look at where I'm going during the coming weeks:

first, to my parents' place in the Okanagan Valley;

then a few days in Vancouver;

then I fly east and meet up with Billy so we can spend a week at idyllic Crotch Lake (heh heh);

followed by a few days in Montreal;

some time in Toronto;

and then winding up in Hamilton, Ontario.

I don't know that it's possible to understand how different from Canada it is here without spending some time here, but rest assured that I can't wait to be home. All of those photographs look like heaven to me.

I have some new knitting photos to show you before I leave -- maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow morning. And did you all see that Monica's IRO chart is now at the Rock-Along Gallery? Woo!